Recently I have finished the Silent Hill 2 Remake and I have some things to say about it. These are purely subjective as always and this will not be structured like my previous blog entry, just for the sake of trying to keep this short(er). I want to express how much I love the original. It has been a companion to me for a while now, it lives in my head constantly and rent free. It is absolutely amazing and I love it to bits. The atmosphere, the characters, the immersion and the amazing music create a game that is a fantastic experience and I consider it easily as one of my 10/10. When I heard there was a remake coming, I was naturally skeptical (despite the pretty good new adaptations of the Resident Evil series) and I was even more worried when the Bloober team was announced as those who were doing the remake. After finishing it several times (I got all the original endings), my feelings are mixed to positive.
First, let me start with the positives. Maria is absolutely 100% amazing and done much better here than she was in the original. She is more attractive and not just physically; her subtle movements and inflections are done in such a way as to allure James and lead him down a certain path. She is also much more grounded. The voice actress has done a phenomenal job – especially since she also voices Mary. Her lines (as well as everyone else’s) are 1:1 of the original and some of the weirdness thus remains in the game, but the new dialogue is just so well done. Maria presents this new opportunity for James and exists as a manifestation of his desires and dreams. Her new version truly reflects that and I feel like she better represents how she was born from a dream of wanting back Mary, who is lying in pain and suffering for three years. Truly well done. The designers as well as the voice actress deserves all the praise they can get.
I also loved that one scene in Heaven’s Night, when Maria pours James a drink. What follows is for me one of the best silent portrayals of a recovering alcoholic. I do not know who made this scene up, whether it was up to the screenwriters, the animators or maybe even the voice actor(s), but it is once again fantastic. James refuses the drink, Maria sighs, drinks her own and walks to the door near the exit. She calls to James to follow him and to leave, however James is somewhat unable to leave the poured drink on the table. He looks at it, licks his lips, displays something that can be described as pure agony and visibly shivers for a second. Maria once again calls to him, he turns around to face her, still sitting on the bar stool and one last time glances at that drink. He wants to drink it so badly, but then again feels like if he does, he will be undoing his efforts of temperance. It is a short scene, but it is fantastic in what it wants to do. Often, whenever watching movies or playing games, I am of the opinion that these are a visual medium and makers should stick to the good old golden rule of “show, don’t tell” (especially you, M. Night. Shyamalan). This one scene shows a lot, without telling.
Finally, that scene at the very end of the game, at the rooftop, where James has to defeat the final boss of the game is done exceptionally well too. During the scene, the entity that looks like Mary and Maria is taunting James and also commenting upon his journey through Silent Hill. Depending on the ending the player has acquired, the scene shifts slightly. What I absolutely loved about it was how effortlessly the voice actress switched from Mary to Maria and one could hear the abrupt change in her voice. It was masterful.
I also enjoyed how in the remake, Bloober team remained faithful to the original endings. There is Leave, In Water, Maria as well Dog, Ufo and Rebirth. I will not be describing the endings here, since those pertain more to the original than they do to this remake, especially since all of them are 90% identical in lines, shots, etc. I commend the team behind the remake for this. They could have easily just done one and call it quits. They also added two new endings, I haven’t had yet the chance to see these, but I want to come back to the game for them. If nothing else, my desire to replay the game again is a very positive thing about it.
Lastly, I also want to praise the level design. The areas in the game were not 1 to 1 recreation of the original, they were largely expanded and even completely new areas were added. This is a good thing! There were certain areas, like the Toluca prison that felt like I was playing Dark Souls 1. You had opening shortcuts, interconnected areas, various puzzles that required you to backtrack, but rarely you were running in the same hallways back and forth, it was excellent. This is a short paragraph, but I cannot stress enough how good the levels were designed.
Now, for the negatives. All of this is obviously my subjective opinion and I am by no means a flawless person. However, I felt that in the Leave ending, when James recognizes what he has done and leaves Silent Hill with Laura in hope for a new and maybe better life, the voice actress for Maria/Mary reads Mary’s letter to James. I know I was just praising her above, and she does extremely well during the game, but reading the letter, it felt flat. It felt like an actress reading a script into the microphone. In the original, the scene goes on forever and is heartbreaking. In the letter, Mary describes her love for James, how she was afraid of dying and also of hurting James simply by being ill and dying. An absurd approach to a terrible situation. But the original voice actress just poured her heart into it and I remember when I first played the original game, I cried. Here it just did not feel emotional at all.
Akira Yamaoka is the composer of the original soundtrack that is fantastic. It is another thing that I keep on my Spotify playlist and listen to it almost every day. The music of the Silent Hill series has been a constant positive about the franchise even when some of the entries were not so great. In the remake, the original music is present and is also once again done (remade) by Akira, however I felt like when there was not a scene that was a 1 to 1 recreation of an original scene with the original music, there was barely any music at all. I had to crank up the volume on my TV to even hear if anything was playing in the background at all. In the original, the music was always there. In the remake, I had to go look for it.
Even at the very beginning of the gameplay sections, the game is just too dark, there is no going about it. After I got the flashlight, I was hoping the situation would improve, but it did not. Once again, the videogame equivalent of what a flashlight is does not work here. It barely illuminates a small circle in front of James and you can and will miss items, enemies and collectibles. I had to turn the brightness all the way up in certain sections which made the game look terrible on my TV, which goes to show that the darkness in Silent Hill 2 Remake was a deliberate choice. You might think, who complains about dark in a horror game? Well, me, because I like to know where I am going and what is in front of me as well as around me.
At the beginning, when James is still in South Vale, the number of enemies feels just about right, not too many and yet there is a lying figure around (almost) every corner. It is unnerving. However, once you move into the Apartments later in the game, there are way too many enemies. In later parts of the game, it gets ridiculous. It feels like Resident Evil on crack. There are so many mannequins it is hilarious. No hospital I ever had the misfortune of being in had that many nurses like the Brookhaven hospital in Silent Hill. I feel like the lying figures have taken all the zip bags in the state of Maine, not just from the town the game takes place in (Silent Hill is now in Maine, ok?). What this does is that it makes an otherwise slow and immersive story and atmosphere rich game, an action game. I was expecting Mike to show up and pepper the demons with machine gun fire and invite James for drinks at a bar he knows about. But what makes that particular scene in Resident Evil 4 fun is that in that game, it has full on switched from a horror game to an action scene akin from James Cameron movies. In Resident Evil 4, Leon S. Kennedy is on a mission to save the president’s daughter whose trail he follows to a military base on an island in Spain and a fellow secret service pilot shows up in a helicopter and starts blasting Leon’s enemies with the helicopter’s machine guns while actiony music starts playing. In my opinion, running and gunning does not belong in Silent Hill.
Oh well, when it comes to the characters themselves, apart from Maria I felt like they were all more or less ok. James in the original is a regular guy, who is socially awkward and talks as if he is in a stupor. He is extremely tired, barely fumbling around like me every morning at work. It is all a part of the dreamy hazy vision of Silent Hill that is so reminiscent of Twin Peaks. I felt that while the actor who does remake James really tried hard, they made him sound way too confident. I do not hate the remake James at all, in fact I am praising the actor for his work, however I just felt that the original was better. The remake James leans closer to the role of a big blockbuster movie. More handsome, more confident, more resolute. A typical Hollywood protagonist.
And so it goes with the rest of the characters too. Angela was fine. She looked like a regular shy teenager. She sounded like a troubled teenager. Laura was an annoying kid, just as she was in the original game. Eddie was alright, although he had the stereotypical fat guy voice of which I was not a fan.
What about Pyramid head? I felt he was great; he was still a threatening presence that was judging James from the beginning. When he first shows up, in the Apartments behind the bars and just stares at James without moving, while the radio goes insane is a very strong moment. Bloober has done Pyramind head justice.
In conclusion, I cannot help but make comparisons with the Resident Evil 4 Remake. The original Resident Evil 4 is another game that means a lot to me and has for or better or worse shaped the kind of individual I am today. I enjoyed the remake of Resi 4, however just like with that one, I feel like the remake of Silent Hill 2 was not entirely necessary. I am not overly fond of remakes, whether they are videogames or movies. I prefer remasters myself, upscaled graphics, textures, modern controls and the ability to run the game on modern systems.
What would I rate the Silent Hill 2 Remake? I could not decide. But I completed the game twice in a row, in one sitting and achieved the 5 various endings that there are. And I still want to play it again. In the most important aspects of the game – the story, characters and immersion the game is very strong. However, it has shortcomings in the other areas. I am planning on playing it some more, to get the other two new endings, but after that I am going back to the original. Would I recommend it? Absolutely. I want to say 7/10, because some of the negatives were rather significant, but because I just love the universe and the original so much, I am as subjective as I can be and rate Silent Hill 2 Remake an 8/10. If they add the original soundtrack via an update like they did with Resident Evil 4 Remake, this would be even higher.
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